


Let’s set the world on fire (We can burn brighter than the sun)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: (depending on who you ask), Established Relationship, Gen, Getting Together, Humor, Kono is devious, M/M, POV Chin Ho Kelly, Team as Family, it's all very canon compliant really, steve and danny are dumbasses who are in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24380557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: They’re sitting around and shooting the breeze and enjoying the relaxed air at Rumfire when Kono takes a sip of her beer and asks innocently, like it requires zero lead in, “So you’re dating, right?”“Yes,” Steve says, which would have been fine, of course, and totally okay, if only Danny hadn’t answered at that exact same moment with an equally convincing, “No.”Or: Going out for drinks after work used to involve a lot less romcom drama before Chin joined Five-0.
Relationships: Five-0 Team - Relationship, Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 38
Kudos: 355





	Let’s set the world on fire (We can burn brighter than the sun)

**Author's Note:**

> This is something that’s been 99% finished but has been gathering dust in my WIP document for many months now, so I’m kicking it out into the wide open world. It’s set somewhere in the very early seasons of the show.
> 
> The title comes from _We Are Young_ by Fun!

Chin loves his team. He really does – Kono is his cousin and also his best friend, Steve is a great guy and just as great if unorthodox as a team leader, and Danny is that brand of ride or die family man that’s very rare, but that Chin identifies with a lot.

Still, there are times that he yearns for the ease and simplicity of a regular police squad. Particularly, times like when he’s having a drink with colleagues after the successful dismantling of a drug ring, and they’re sitting around and shooting the breeze and enjoying the relaxed air at Rumfire when Kono takes a sip of her beer and asks innocently, like it requires zero lead in, “So you’re dating, right?”

“Yes,” Steve says, which would have been fine, of course, and totally okay, if only Danny hadn’t answered at that exact same moment with an equally convincing, “No.”

This. This is what still sometimes makes Chin nostalgic for the HPD, back in the good old days, when they didn’t think he was a dirty cop yet and he was working with a different McGarrett. This never would have happened to John.

Steve and Danny are sharing one side of the booth, so when they turn to stare at each other, it’s an almost comical display. It lasts long enough that the comedy either gets drowned out by the awkwardness or heightened by it, depending on your sense of humor. Chin thinks Kono’s is probably a touch different from his.

“We’re not?” Steve asks, after several beats.

Danny bristles. You could make a full broom out of Danny’s daily moods. “We _are_? Maybe you should’ve told me.”

“Obviously we are.” Steve sounds like he’s trying hard to stay blasé, but in reality he’s a little hurt. “Just last night, I made you dinner.”

Danny repeatedly pokes Steve’s shoulder, like he’s hurt that Steve is hurt and now he’s trying to distract them both with a physical ache. “You’ve made me dinner hundreds of times.”

“But this was dinner with intention,” Steve argues. “And wine.”

“There was wine?” Chin asks. He doesn’t really mean to, but it’s very hard not to be engaged when those two start arguing right in front of you. He can feel Kono smirk at him from his left, but it’s too late to change course. He’s already in the thick of it now. “You could’ve picked up on that, Danny.”

Danny’s hands get going. It’s been a long time coming for this conversation. “It was wine in a can! He served it to me _in_ the can, like we were working our way through a six-pack of Bud Light.”

Kono shakes her head, looking deeply saddened. “Oh, Steve.”

“It was still wine, wasn’t it?” Steve asks. He’s holding up his hands now, too, spread in supplication. 

“But was it?” Chin asks. “Was it really?”

Kono gathers her considerable wits about her. She has pushed her disappointment aside to move on with life, right into the next question Chin wishes she wouldn’t ask, ohana or no. “Okay,” she says, “but you two are fucking, at least.” Really, it’s not even a question. It doesn’t necessitate an answer.

Of course they give her one anyway.

“Yes.” It comes from Danny this time and, again, it would have been completely okay, if only it hadn’t come as a mismatched duo with Steve’s simultaneous, “No.”

To switch things up further, Danny is the first to speak now, after another round of increasingly frustrated staring between the two of them. Chin gets it – their partnership, let alone their personal relationship, is not exactly a smoothly oiled machine right now. Something is creaking. “What, we’re not? Excuse me? Who was that with me in the shower this morning, huh?”

Steve shrugs. “Well, there’s been no...” He makes a gesture that would need to be blurred on TV before watershed.

Chin gives in to an urge he’s had for a while now. He rests his elbows on the table, buries his face in his hands and sighs like he’s trying to extinguish candles on a birthday cake that’s accurate to his age. That would be about ninety, right now, emotionally. “I did not need to know that.”

“That’s not the only way to have sex, Steve,” Danny says, which kind of forces Chin to look up from his temporary hiding place. There’s bound to be some very eloquent facial gymnastics happening across the table right about now.

Chin’s right. Steve is shooting for a new Olympic record in looking like he knows what he’s doing while being uncertain of everything, but with a side of obnoxious stubbornness. It’s a move not many can pull off.

Chin decides to add his two cents, which should also give Steve some direction. “Danny is really, really right. It worries me a little that you don’t know that.”

“It’s a matter of definition. I’ve never been-” Steve cuts himself off a little awkwardly, like there are some things even he doesn’t feel entirely comfortable airing out at this table without a second thought. Chin thinks he just witnessed a miracle happening. “But okay, yeah,” Steve continues, rallying very quickly, “then we’ve had sex. A lot.”

“Every day this week,” Danny supplies.

Steve nods at him. “Multiple times a day, sometimes.”

“So remind me why you thought you weren’t dating, Danny?” Kono asks. It’s a calculated hit. Danny was starting to look smug, as the guy whose opinion was chosen over Steve’s as the correct one twice in a row, but now every trace of that clears from his face to make room for consternation.

“Well,” he says, “how was I supposed to know, really? With this guy? You know what he’s like.”

“Oh, that’s sweet,” Steve says, but going by the way he’s clearly aiming for combative but it ends up laced with laughter, he can’t be all that upset about it. “So what, you need me to spell it out for you?”

“Sure,” Danny shoots back. “That’d be nice.”

“Okay.” Steve gives Danny a pointed look, and then redirects it to Danny’s hand for a second before he takes it in his with just as much gravitas. It’s a little ominous, but sweet. “Danny, we’re dating. D-A-T-”

“Okay,” Danny says, right before he starts groping Steve.

“Wow!” Chin yells, because there are things he doesn’t need to know, and then there are things he doesn’t need to _see_. From the face Steve is pulling, comically shocked, this is one of those things.

Danny’s hand resurfaces from under the table, holding a wallet. “Hey,” Steve complains. “That’s mine.”

“I know it’s yours,” Danny says, as he flips it open and throws a few bills on the table. “We’re dating now, remember? Which means you’re paying for my drink and a celebratory round for the table.”

Steve yanks his wallet from Danny’s hands and stuffs it back where it came from, but allows the money to remain where it is. “We’re leaving? We only just got here.”

“Really?” Danny asks. He leaves a pause, which is filled in its entirety by Steve and Danny staring at each other and communicating something that Chin is not even going to try to decipher. Seems like they found the lube. “Do you need me to spell it out for you?”

Steve’s eyebrows fly up. “Oh,” he says, which is almost definitely the wrong first letter unless they’re skipping ahead a lot. Neither of them ends up saying the obvious next part out loud, but the _we’re having sex_ is implied so loudly in the way Steve is suddenly grinning like a loon that it’s as if he were shouting it anyway. Within the next minute, Chin and Kono are very abruptly the only two occupants of their table. 

So much for team night – half the company just split to locate the nearest available bed. Yet another thing that never happened back when Chin still worked with John, though he can’t say that he feels very bad about it. A cop’s romantic life is often a rocky road, so it’s good to see things work out for his friends, even if it’s from a little more up close than he strictly needs.

Kono beams at him in the sudden absence. “Fixed it,” she says.

He shakes his head. It’s a lot closer to despairing disbelief than denial. “You scare me sometimes.”

She smiles like that was meant as a compliment, which it of course kind of was.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! I've been so very very bad at responding to comments, but I read and reread all of them and they are always extremely appreciated and I love you for shouting back across the internet void. ❤
> 
> I’m on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 (and mostly McDanno) sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


End file.
